[The 4-phase approach]

1. Finding the best strategy for your business

To answer those questions and more, Entrepreneur interviewed Michael Canic, business consultant and author of Ruthless Consistency: Aligning Your Organization to Win…or Else!

Entrepreneur One of a leader’s many responsibilities is to have a ‘strategic plan’ for their company.
Does a strategic plan produce sustained focus for
the leader, their management team and the company’s employees?

MC Actually, a strategic plan doesn’t produce sustained focus for anyone. What typically happens is that well-intentioned leaders go off-site for the annual ‘strategic planning’ retreat. They plaster the walls with flip chart notes and discuss at length big-picture issues such as mission and vision. When it’s over, everyone breathes a sigh of relief and gets back to the ‘real work’ that’s stacking up back at the office. The strategic plan is documented and distributed, and then it sits on a shelf and collects dust.

Entrepreneur So why don’t strategic plans become strategic reality?

MC Because strategic planning is all about creating ‘the plan’. Plans don’t implement themselves. Strategy, right through implementation, needs to be approached as a process. That’s why we created the four-phase strategic management process — to focus on turning strategy into reality.

Entrepreneur The idea of strategic management sounds good because it puts the strategic plan into action. What are the four phases of your plan and why are they important?

MC The four phases are assessment, positioning, planning and implementation. The reason they’re so important is because ignoring any single phase can lead to disaster. Failing to conduct a thorough assessment can mean making decisions based on faulty assumptions. Failing to establish the positioning of a company can result in plans that focus on the wrong things. Failing to plan leaves you with a destination but not a roadmap. And failing to implement means your efforts at everything else are wasted.

1. The assessment phase

The key here is that leaders have to be willing to attack their assumptions — to overcome their egos, to come to grips with reality, warts and all. So you start with a question the company needs to comprehensively answer: What is our current situation?

There are three things to look at here. One is the organisation itself, from an operational, financial, structural and people perspective. Two is market data — current and potential markets and current and potential customers. You want to look at your performance feedback and value drivers. Third, and this is the one that’s most often neglected, is what I call the ’STEEP’ factors: the sociocultural, technological, economic, environmental and political factors that can greatly impact a business.

Consider a fast-growing software company. Suppose their growth rate over the past three years has averaged 44%. Customers are happy. Investors are happy. It might be tempting to feel a little self-satisfied, perhaps become a bit complacent. But what’s happening to the industry? For example, if the trend is for ‘on demand’ rather than ‘on premises’ software, failing to recognise this and adapt could put you out of business.

2. The positioning phase

The question to ask here is: what do you want to accomplish as a business? Forget the manicured mission and vision statements. Most of these are too vague, too long and not remembered. Boil it down: come up with one, simply worded sentence that captures what you do as a business so that a stranger who heard this sentence could gain a basic understanding of what you do.

Then develop another simply worded sentence to capture what ‘winning’ would look like. Think of the early days of Apple when the overarching goal was to create the most user-friendly operating system for personal computers. Or recall that more than 30 years ago, Nike had a single, laser focus: ‘Crush Adidas’.

3. The planning phase

The general question to ask here is: how do you get
there? This is the phase that has to be information-driven.
How much capital is required to support the infrastructure for growth? How rapidly do you have to grow to survive a consolidating market? Which distribution channels do you need to dominate?

Think of how many promising start-ups have died because they underestimated both the time to establish a significant market presence and the capital required to achieve it.

4. The implementation phase

Here you must answer the question: how do you ensure it happens? This is the most important phase and the phase where strategic plans fail.

A critical and underestimated part of any implementation is alignment — ensuring that the factors that impact people (from skills, authority, resources and incentives to processes and structure) are all aligned with the overarching goal. It’s alignment through the eyes of the people, not just leaders, that counts.

A second critical aspect of implementation is commitment building. Here we like to structure leaders’ regular communications and engagement with employees. Our underlying belief is that information, input and involvement together help to build commitment.

The last part of this phase involves execution management. Every month, the leadership team should meet for a few hours to track and manage the implementation of the plan. I strongly believe that every 90 days, the leadership team should also meet to recalibrate the plan. Reality changes, and the plan or elements of the plan can become irrelevant. Every 90 days, it’s critical to question the assumptions upon which the plan was built and make adjustments as necessary. Have you lost a key customer? Has a new competitor come into the market? Has a promising investor bailed out on you? What has changed to the reliability of your supply chain?

Unsurprisingly, when a company vigorously adopts a disciplined strategic management process, they’re much more likely to achieve their ambitions — the right ambitions.

[Strategic structures]

2. Five structural elements of strategy

Strategies fail over and over again for the same reason: businesses ignore the five key structural elements of strategy. Miss one and your strategy is doomed to fail.
By Nilofer Merchant

How many times have you experienced this situation: you, your partners and your managers develop a plan, hold meetings, and achieve alignment. Yet during the execution phase, the strategy falls apart. During the inevitable review process, the causes are all too familiar: no defined key players. No consideration of the decision-making process. Too many ideas generated, too few killed. A laborious process or no process at all. The wrong people engaged or poor team collaboration. There’s a reason that the causes of failure are repeated. It’s because strategy has a unique structure, and if you overlook one of the five key elements of that structure, you’ll fail. Add elements that don’t support that structure and you’ll fail. And the failure will look familiar every time.

1. Power distribution

Power distribution dictates who’s involved, how much information each individual can access, and the decision-making process.

It’s crucial to know who you’re working with from their track record on complex strategy projects to basic strengths and weaknesses. Talk to other people in the organisation who have worked with them to gain more information. Vet people to avoid surprises and to understand the best ways to support and motivate team members.

How much of your strategy is confidential? What can — or should — be shared with other groups? Set the boundaries and share them so that everyone agrees and has the same expectations. Make sure that the inner working of the group matches the culture and values of the parent organisation. If your company is as free-flowing as Google, don’t bind people with conservative rules that eliminate communal sharing of ideas or the development of innovative solutions.

2. Decision-making

The way that decisions are made in organisations determines how ideas are generated and which ideas are considered. The way decisions are made influences how these ideas are carried out later.

Does decision-making in your organisation flow top-down or bottom-up? Who are the holders of the power to decide which ideas advance and which are eliminated? If ideas are valued in your culture, there’s a strong likelihood that it might not matter who generates the ideas.

3. Idea generation

How ideas are generated affects the quantity and quality of these ideas, which directly affects the number of viable strategy options.

A company that has an annual strategy meeting with a brainstorming component that encompasses input from many directions within the company uses one type of idea generation. The Google model involves having employees use 20% of their time for innovation. They test and grow projects. Some projects are nurtured and provide the company with revenue. Others are killed off. It’s even possible that original projects may mutate into something different.

4. Process

Process is the way that ideas are handled and consumed within organisations. Process defines the way that agreements and commitments are made and managed, and how well people understand what is happening and what to do. The process-driven organisation avoids wasting employee time and energy. People in this type of company reach agreement that an action is valuable, develop a process around it, and set it in motion.

Process may be communicated to a team in writing, by word of mouth or in other ways. Agreement is critical to the understanding of process within an organisation.

5. People

In an organisation of any size, people bring their domain knowledge, talents, and perspectives to strategy creation. Often people are viewed as the first point of strategy failure, but they are actually the last point of failure in a long series of cascading interactions.

Put another way, very bright, creative, motivated people can fail if they are embedded in a strategy creation structure process where power, decision-making, idea generation, or process are broken.

Each of the five elements is critical to the strength, balance, and practicality of the proposed strategy. Tighten up around these five and watch your team’s next strategy
succeed beyond your plans.

[Growth strategy]

3. Plotting your path to business growth

Growth strategies are not cast in stone. You need to be flexible to maximise opportunities as they present themselves.
By David Meier

ost entrepreneurs, from time to time, have more than one way to grow their businesses available to them. The process of deciding on a growth strategy is ongoing, and the decisions that result can be critical to the future success of any business.

The search for real business growth, by creating permanent increases in profit as a direct result of measurable and sustained increases in sales volume, may not only be a reaction to opportunities in the marketplace, but also a requirement in order for your business to maintain market share. The right decisions can conceivably have a major positive impact on your business’s bottom line, thereby creating real growth. However, if you choose unwisely, or decide to do nothing when action is clearly warranted, the results can lead to a loss of growth potential, or even a period of negative growth (decreased sales and profitability).

Invest in growth

As with so many issues in business, your growth decisions should be based on objective financial data, consisting of relevant estimates and projections. Not every growth strategy can be expected to impact your business in the same manner, and over the same time period. Your ability to compare growth options is the best way to make informed decisions.

Think of your decisions in the context of ROI analysis. Each growth opportunity has an investment component, money that you would be required to spend as a part of the process of implementing a specific growth strategy. The corresponding return that you can expect from your investment in business growth can be represented as the increased profit your business is projected to incur, directly as a result of the sales increases created by your business’s growth strategy. For example: a retail business is considering growing by adding a new product line. The required investment to add the line is R1,2 million. This addition is expected to add R800 000 in annual sales, and as a direct result, a corresponding R200 000 increase in annual net profit. Therefore, the anticipated ROI from this additional (product) line is in excess of 16% (R200 000/R1,2 million).

Evaluate growth plans

If the business is currently enjoying an overall 25% ROI, the question the owner must answer is, ‘Should I invest R1,2 million in the addition of the new product line to earn an ROI that is nearly 9% less than my business is currently earning (25% – 16% = 9%)?’ The correct answer may appear to be an obvious ‘no’, but there may be other business reasons that would cause the owner to decide to add this product line, such as the presence of a strong market demand for the new items.

In any event, once each growth strategy is converted into an ROI percentage, you can compare dissimilar growth options, and ROI can be used as a critical financial component in any business growth decision. Furthermore, just as ROI analysis can be used to evaluate these additional growth strategies, it also can be used to evaluate business ideas, such as those of entirely new businesses. And fortunately, ROI analysis can be applied to these new business ideas well before an owner ever decides to invest in that new business.

Exceptional strategy is based on five key principles: A good plan, the choices and trade-offs you’re willing to make, differentiation, your profit equation and activity integration. Here’s how you can strengthen your business to drive higher growth and profits.

Your key implementation plan framework to get you started

Dr Greg Fisher is a professor in the Management and Entrepreneurship Department at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University and a visiting lecturer at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) in South Africa.

Over the past three years, GDP growth in South Africa has been small. Economists expect 2018 to see GDP growth at 1% or less. And yet the growth strategies of businesses are aiming much, much higher. How do you target 15% to 20% growth under such tight economic conditions?

According to Dr Greg Fisher, a professor in the Management and Entrepreneurship Department at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University and a visiting lecturer at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) in South Africa, you can’t just ride the momentum of the economy. You need to do something more to fill that gap. And therein lies the challenge, because there’s no silver bullet that can drive double digit growth.

“Ultimately, you need to be able to critically think through and formulate multiple ways to fill that gap,” explained Greg during his keynote strategy workshop at the 2017 ThinkSales Sales Leadership Convention. “Success in anything — sports, raising children, learning and business — is driven by fundamental principles that need to be applied with balance and moderation.

“A conceptual understanding of what to do isn’t enough. You need to take action — your ability to drive double digit growth lies in developing a strategy based on five key principles, and then executing it.”

Here are the five key principles you must unpack in order to formulate and execute a growth-driven strategy.

1. You need a good plan

Every successful business shift begins with a good theory. It doesn’t need to be sexy. It does need to be insightful, and give you a map of what to do next, what not to do next, and what value needs to be created through which channels going forward.

Leverage foresight, insight and hindsight to formulate a mental model and hypothesise (or develop a theory) that relates to your market.

Take Steve Jobs as an example. He hypothesised that people would pay a premium price for ease of use and an elegant design in computing. This would form the foundation that other digital products could be added to.

2. Strategy is about making choices and trade-offs

Strategists are constantly faced with choices and trade-offs that need to be made if you’re going to stick to the plan. Remember, true value is created when you make a choice, and don’t try to dabble in multiple things at once. You need a clear and manageable goal. Choices require decisions, often relating to where you will be channelling your resources. A trade-off is not doing something. What will you do and not do? This must align with what you’ve already theorised. It doesn’t serve you or the business to follow too many paths and options.

Which markets will you pursue vigorously and which will you leave alone? Which customers will you target, and which won’t you? Which products will you produce to enact your theory? Which activities will you engage in inside your organisation, what will you outsource and what won’t you do at all? Who will you hire? Who won’t you hire? And which assets will you choose to own?

Everything is a choice and a trade-off. Take Ikea, a retail brand that’s enjoyed 70 years of successful growth. Why? Because of fundamental and particular choices relating to product designs and style. Ikea isn’t everything to everyone — it has a very specific value proposition and delivers on it relentlessly.

3. Differentiation

This is fundamental. Even if you’re the low-cost provider in your space, you still need to be doing something different to drive those costs down; you still need to be differentiating yourself and the way you operate. The world is more competitive than it’s ever been, and buyers have more access to information and options than they’ve ever had. To be competitive, you need to really interrogate your differentiators.

4. Profits

The strategy conversation tends to happen early, the profit conversation happens late. You need to bring them together. When you’re having a strategy conversation, you need to understand how it will drive bottom line growth. The role of strategy is to bridge what customers are willing to pay for a product or service, and what it will cost you to deliver it. The strategies you adopt are determined by theories, choices, differentiation and costs.

The formula is the following:

Profit = the number of products you sell x price of product — expenses.

How does your strategy impact this equation? Which lever will your strategy pull? You ultimately want to drive profit, and to achieve that, your strategy must point to one or more of these three elements.

In other words, either you need to sell more products, or you need to increase the price you can charge, or you need to decrease the expenses you will incur to get that product to market (or a combination of all three).

The key question is therefore: What can you influence to drive the outcome you want? What strategy will drive profit?

The variants on the profit equation that you need to consider include:

Industry average competitors

Uniquely differentiated competitors

Low-cost competitors

Competitors with a digital advantage.

On the other side:

Customer willingness to pay

The cost to produce and deliver your goods.

Profit lies in the middle. Focusing on two or even all three of the levers is challenging, but it will result in the greatest results if executed properly.

But remember: The management of the profit equation is ongoing. You need to manipulate it in action and create a strategy that can be adjusted when and where necessary, always tying it back to the bottom line.

Ideally, you want to spend less while delivering more, resulting in higher profits. Before you can do that though, you must identify your profit levers. Finally, does your profit equation tie back to your points of differentiation, trade-offs and choices and ultimately business theory?

5. Activity integration

Your fifth, final and most important point is activity integration. You need to make your strategy happen. The previous four steps are meaningless unless you can do something with them.

Activity implementation is the result of the business performing a certain set of discreet activities. These include the sales force, managing customers and managing returns. This is your core and critical to business. Think of each business unit as a part to a mechanical watch.

The challenge becomes: How do they all work together in the service of the four points above? Your goal is to ultimately create something that is beautiful and precise. Independently, these departments are meaningless. Success lies in multiple activities, all working together to drive your strategy.

Start by driving your strategy and ensuring integration

To get started, consider which activities are necessary to drive your strategy and ensure integration. How these activities work together reinforces everything you’re doing. Activities amplify each other, until 1 + 1 = 3.

The problem is that multiple activities working together is difficult to replicate. There is no single activity (or silver bullet) that will drive success. You need to optimise all of your activities — you need ten primary activities, and you need to do them all very well. That’s activity integration.

The problem is that it’s not easy, which is why so many organisations fail at this stage.

If you can get this right though, the results will speak for themselves. 1x1x1… to 10 = 100%. 0.9×0.9×0.9… to 10 = 35%. That’s the power of activity integration. It also means that doing each activity at 90% will bring the entire organisation down to 35%.

Walt Disney conceptualised the entire Disney business according to activity integration. Each element worked into the next, starting with movies at the centre. Get that right, and all the other activities — Disneyland, merchandising and so on — work. Negate the movie piece and the rest disintegrates.

Bringing it all together

What’s your theory?

Do you have a clear, consistent and concise theory on how to succeed?

How does that theory translate into your choices and trade-offs?

What definitive things are you choosing to do and not to do?

How do these choices drive differentiation? You need a core differentiation that customers can appreciate, value and buy into.

How does your differentiation ultimately drive profits? Can you articulate it, and what levers are you pulling?

What activities do you need to implement your strategy, and how do they ultimately integrate with each other?

Your Business workplan

1. Theory

A theory is a mental model about how your organisation does (or could) create value. It reveals hypotheses about how an organisation can create significant value. It usually entails:

Foresight about the evolution of the industry in which you operate

Insight into how your organisation can create value in the industry as it evolves

Hindsight about how you might build past competencies, relationships and assets.

We theorise that

Key questions about yourself

What are the assumptions embedded in your theory? Are they valid? Could they be tested?

Would the other leaders in your organisation describe a similar theory underpinning your strategy? Do you have a consistent view of opportunities and mechanisms for value creation across the organisation’s leaders?

2. Choices & trade-offs

Identify the CHOICES & TRADE-OFFS that you have made, and need to make, to act on your theory.

A choice is a clear decision to do something specific and meaningful. A trade-off is a clear choice not to do something that is somewhat tempting or attractive to pursue.

We have chosen to Identify 3 to 5 important strategic choices you have made

We still need to make choices with respect to Identify 3 to 5 important strategic choices you still need to make

We have chosen NOT to Identify 3 to 5 important trade-offs that you have made

We still need to decide NOT to Identify 3 to 5 important trade-offs that you still need to make.

Key questions to ask yourself

Do your choices and trade-offs clearly reflect your theory?

What’s preventing you from making the choices and trade-offs that you still need to make? What would it take to definitively make these choices?

3. Differentiation

Identify the points of DIFFERENTIATION that are embedded in what you do (i.e. in your theory, choices and trade-offs).

Differentiation is something that clearly distinguishes an organisation from others in the industry. It is something that other organisations targeting the same customers are not doing and which those customers ultimately find valuable.

We are different (or strive to be different) with respect to

Key questions to ask yourself

Do your customers see and experience these points of differentiation? Would they agree you are different in this regard?

Would the employees in your organisation describe similar elements of differentiation? Do you have a consistent view of your organisation’s differentiators across the organisation?

How easy is it for your competitors to emulate your points of differentiation? Could they easily copy your points of differentiation? If not, why not?

4. Profits

Identify how your points of differentiation drive PROFITS.

A useful way to examine the connection between strategy and profits is to examine a simple version of the profit equation as follows: Profit = (Number of products sold x Price of products) – Expenses. Identify how the organisation’s differentiation elements drive profits as follows:

Identify those elements of the profit equation that apply for your strategy and complete the statement where applicable

We are able to sell more products than rivals (YES/NO) because

We are able to charge higher prices for our products than rivals (YES/NO) because

We are able to reduce our expenses relative to rivals (YES/NO)because

Check those that are appropriate and complete the statement

We sell more products because

We charge higher prices for products because

We reduce expenses because

Key questions to ask yourself

What more could you be doing to increase volumes, charge higher prices and/or reduce expenses?

Does your profit equation tie back to your theory, choices and trade-offs, and to your points of differentiation?

Is the profit equation consistently understood across the organisation?

5. Activity integration

Identify the ACTIVITIES needed to deliver on your points of differentiation, and assess whether these activities are adequately INTEGRATED with one another (i.e. reinforce one another).

STEP 1. Write up a brief description of each activity required to deliver on your organisation’s elements of differentiation.

An activity is something that a organisation does repeatedly in the process of developing, marketing and delivering products and services to clients.

STEP 2. Draw links between the activities that currently reinforce each other.

Reinforcement between activities comes about when two activities support each other such that when they operate together, they are more effective than if they operated independently i.e. doing one activity well enhances the other activity.

Key questions to ask yourself

Do we consistently view our organisation as an integrated system of activities that reinforce one another, or do we tend to deal with each activity independently?

Are our activities arranged in a way that consistently and effectively delivers on our key points of differentiation? If not, how could they be rearranged to more effectively deliver on key points of differentiation?

3 Strategies For Growing Your Online Business Fast

Jay Abraham is one of the world’s leading business consultants and mentors to people like Tony Robbins, Daymond John, Joe Polish, Stephen R. Covey and Russell Brunson. Over the years, he’s built and scaled eight- and nine-figure businesses, and is constantly sought after by some of the most successful companies to help grow their businesses fast.

I recently spoke to Abraham about the ways in which he grows an online business, and what he told me was that it boiled down to three primary strategies applicable to growing any business, whether it’s online or offline. Most people who struggle with this know that it’s hard to grow or scale a business.

They think that to grow a business, they need major capital or funding. While that might help, it’s also a shortcut that doesn’t always pan out. Sometimes, having the coffers filled can actually sidetrack you. Instead of looking for ways you can become profitable, you look for ways to grow by spending more.

The answer to growth is not in merely scaling out your spend. It doesn’t equate to having more employees or a bigger office or any of those things for that matter. The best way to actually do this is organically by bootstrapping. If you’re a solopreneur or running a small business, then this information is integral to your own growth.

Rather than trying to spend more, you have to focus on conversions. Conversions are at the heart of any business. If you don’t have an offer that converts, or the capability to track those conversions, then you’re wasting your time. You can’t scale by any measure without a properly converting offer in your business.

Rather than spending money on the superficial, you have to spend it wisely to get that converting offer working. That means that if you spend $1 to acquire a customer, you have to ensure that you’re making that $1 back and earning more. Otherwise, you have a business that’s losing money, not one that’s making money.

That’s the premise and basis for building and growing business. You simply can’t scale to any degree without that. There are many ways to actually do this. Creating a converting offer can be done through a variety of mediums. One of those mediums is the webinar.

Russell Brunson often tells the story about how a single webinar saved him from bankruptcy twice. Liz Benny and Kent Clothier have used a single webinar to generate millions of dollars in sales. It’s a powerful medium you should be using to sell something.

There is a particular process to selling through the webinar. Most entrepreneurs confuse selling through a webinar as teaching. You shouldn’t be teaching at all. You should be breaking down limiting beliefs through the vehicle of stories.

The truth is that most people don’t buy through webinars because they have false or limiting beliefs. These beliefs are attributed to the vehicle, or offer itself, as much as they are to internal and external beliefs. Successful webinars focus on destroying those false beliefs. Once those dominos topple down, selling becomes almost effortless.

Abraham talks about three primary strategies for growing your business fast. Each of these strategies has several tactics tied to it. But, at the heart of it, there are really only three paths forward. If you can heed one of these paths, you can likely achieve your business goals.

However, keep in mind that the path from zero to seven figures is not going to be the same as the path from seven to eight figures or from eight to nine figures and beyond. The skills you need to use to get to seven figures in your business are not going to be the same skills you use to move you further up. And it’s easy to get stuck in one cycle, often repeating your revenue year after year and not moving beyond that.

Anyone who’s serious about making money online understands that there are challenges when going from one phase to the next. It can be frustrating to say the least. And without a proper sales funnel, actually growing the business will be difficult. You need the right systems in place in order to capitalise on the process.

What most people fail to focus on are the email sequences. How can you bridge that divide between leads who enter your world and those who become customers? The answer is through the email sequence. The email sequence is key for building a relationship with the lead by telling your story.

1. Acquisition

The first strategy for growing your online (or offline) business is through acquisition. How can you get more customers? Often, to do this, you need to setup a front-end sales funnel. You need to have some sort of offer that will bring the customer into your world, whatever that might be.

Abraham says that there are loads of different tactics that work here. Webinars are one strategy. But, there are also free-plus-shipping offers, other tripwires (which are low-ticket front-end offers usually from $1 to $37) and other lead magnets such as free ebooks, checklists, cheat sheets and so on.

When you sit down to think about how you can acquire customers, you have to envision their pain points and how you can go about adding some value to their lives. You might lose some money on the front-end. But, if you have a proper sales funnel, you can maximise the average cart value with up-sells and one-time-offers that will make your ad spend profitable.

2. Ascension

The second way that Abraham says that you can grow your business is through ascension. How can you get your customers to ascend a value ladder? What email sequences can you plan that will move the customer up the progression of value in your business.

With the proper sales funnel and email sequences in place, you can take a customer from your low-ticket, front-end offers up through your value ladder to a high-ticket offer. During each step of the ascension, you have to ensure that you’re adding tremendous amounts of value in the exchange.

If you’re not adding value, then the customer simply won’t ascend and you won’t grow your business (fast or slow). That’s what it takes. Be sure that you’re adding loads of value during each step of the process if you want your customers to ascend and make more money.

3. Frequency

The third way to grow your business is through frequency. How can you get your customers to buy more frequently? That’s the big question. Can you do this through a continuity plan or through new offers or some other monetization? The challenge is doing this without zapping too many of your resources.

Some people struggle to understand how they can grow their business. Others have growing pains. When you grow, you need to scale out your infrastructure. You need more employees and systems in place. Again, the same strategies that took you to seven figures won’t take you beyond.

Take a look at your product or service offering and figure out how you can get your customers to spend more frequently. How can you monetise your customers while still adding more value in the exchange. Don’t just look for ways to extract more money from current customers. Look for ways you can get them to spend more often and monetise that.

Scale Your Values To Scale Your Business

I always get asked, “What is the best way to scale my business?” Even by my business coaching clients.

Based on my experience, scaling a business through values will help to achieve sustainable growth, in any industry. Value-based companies should start with understanding their core values and how to scale those values before worrying about how the company itself will grow.

Failure to scale these values causes all sorts of problems when the company begins to scale. Your core message gets lost. Your team’s motivation decreases. Your lack of a strong corporate culture leads to a lack of production.

Don’t lose your values

Losing sight of the values that comprise your company culture makes organisations less successful, efficient and effective. It can even cause companies to fall apart. Don’t undermine or undervalue your company’s values or mission.

Studies have shown the impact that a focus on company values has on operations. According to Deloitte research, mission-driven companies have 30 percent higher levels of innovation and 40 percent higher levels of retention. Companies with happy employees that are aligned with their core values also outperform the competition by 20 percent, Gallup found.

Set the stage

When new interns start at our firm, we tell them that we do not teach about working in sports. We only teach four things, the four core values of our company: gratitude, empathy, accountability and effective communication. In order to get everyone aligned, we reinforce these values in all three stages of scaling our business, and we use different strategies to instill them.

Invest in the learning stage

Understand that your new employee is an investment in your company, not a privilege. You are investing in a person’s professional growth and, for those with a values-based business, you also invest in their personal growth.

The learning stage is where you tell stories and share content which will get your team aligned with your core values. Find people who represent the values you aspire to follow and tell their stories. Provide examples of people who succeed with those values. Also, share times of failure that happen when people do not live aligned with the standards that your team is supposed to follow.

Don’t execute the messenger

The next stage is the execution phase, where our team members mature through those core values and eventually become profitable. The execution stage is where an employee learns to balance the values of a company while also maintaining profitability for the firm.

Having an appropriate compensation package is key at this stage. What matters is that there’s a learning phase that we as employers invest, an execution phase that leads to profitability, and then an equity phase, warrants or even investment from our employees.

Equity stage: Retain and reward

The equity or partnership stage allows your company to scale and thrive while maintaining a connection to core values. Equity or partnership rewards employees who have shown a commitment to your company and its culture over an extended period of time.

Setting an appropriate timeline to transition from employee to partner is important. People need to know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

SAS shows how to scale

Some of the biggest companies have been able to grow and scale because of their commitment to their culture.

Billionaire Jim Goodnight’s company, SAS, is one of the many companies that operate based on values or a mission. They are committed to a holistic approach, providing core values, support and appreciation to their employees. They see themselves as “authentic, accountable, curious and passionate” and put those values into everything that they do.

Live your core values

If you remain firmly rooted in your core values and principles, you’ll be able to not only bring monetary success to your company, but personal success to yourself, your employees, your community and the people you interact with every day.